Parliament House (Adelaide)
The Parliament House in Adelaide is the seat of the Parliament of South Australia . It was built to replace the overcrowded Old Parliament House . For financial reasons, the construction of the building took place in stages over a period of more than 65 years. It is one of the largest parliament buildings in Australia .
history
In 1874, the Governor of South Australia hired a commission to hold a competition to find a design for the building. Edmund Wright , a prominent Adelaid architect, won this competition with his partner Lloyd Taylor . Its plan included Corinthian order columns , imposing towers and a large dome. Since the financial resources available at the time were insufficient to fully implement the concept, the towers and dome were ultimately left out. Occasional efforts to add the dome to the structure were never put into practice. The building materials used were marble from Kapunda and granite from West Iceland.
Construction began on the west wing in 1874. This part of the building was completed in 1889 at a cost of £ 165,404. The west wing consisted of a new chamber for the House of Assembly and the associated office space. Meetings of the Legislative Council were still held in the adjacent Old Parliament House. Due to the economic crisis in the 1890s, construction could not be continued. As a result, plans for the east wing were not made until 1913. Due to the First World War , the continuation of the construction project was delayed again.
The project was resumed in the 1930s with a grant from Sir John Langdon Bonython of £ 100,000. At that time, it also weakened the mass unemployment that Australia suffered in the wake of the Great Depression. Work on the east wing began in 1936 , when South Australia celebrated its centenary, and finished in 1939. The cost was £ 241,887.
On June 5, 1939 , the grand opening of the completed Parliament building took place in the presence of Lord Gowrie , the then Australian Governor General .
Web links
Coordinates: 34 ° 55 ′ 16 ″ S , 138 ° 35 ′ 55 ″ E